80s Stink Bugs

A pretty unexciting rendition of my inspiration, but most of my inspiration involved actual stuff from around the house. My doodling "models" included flowers in my vases and the dead bugs laying around the house!

I wanted to combine these things with an unexpected motif/color palatte — I really love that color scheme and graphics of the late 80s / early 90s, as depicted by these amazing caboodles. Plus, my drawing style tends towards the doodle-y and I thought the inclusion of semi-gross bugs was a playful turn to take a floral motif, so it all seemed to fit together.

Here are the designs I ended up scanning in to use:

(I couldn't help drawing that eye. I'll use it for something else!)

And here they are as I started to color them:

I tried a lot of different pattern combos, and there were a lot of pieces I didn't end up using. This is one that I came up with:

And here it is with two other color options:

(PS These kinds of stink bugs weren't in the US in the 80s, so this is kind of thematically anachronistic!)

What a wonderful class — I've learned so much, and I can't wait to try more!